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Three Shakespeare Songs, Op 6

Introduction

The ‘Three Shakespeare Songs’ were composed in 1905, the first and most successful of Quilter’s seventeen settings of Shakespeare’s words. Come away, death shows Quilter’s ability to adapt the phrases of his music to suit the stress of the words; the two verses are nearly strophic, but not quite, and the climax appears on the word Shakespeare surely designed for the purpose, ‘weep’. Warlock’s comment on O mistress mine perhaps balances Trevor Hold’s opinion (expressed in his excellent study of Quilter’s songs: The Walled-in Garden, Thames, 1996) that it ‘is the weakest of the set … the worst flaw is the quite unjustified repetition of the opening line of the poem’. A possible justification can be to use this repetition to show the singer’s realization that his light-hearted remarks are only too true, and that ‘what’s to come’ really is unsure. The final cadence, far from being ‘excruciatingly sloppy’ as Trevor Hold would have it, is for some listeners at least an expression of resignation at the transitoriness of joy. The third song is more straightforward, save that the mood of the poem is not. Is it defiant, miserable, cheerful, or what? Quilter manages to make all these interpretations possible in this rhythmically powerful setting.

Centred around Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel, this collection of English song—brilliantly interpreted by baritone David John Pike—brings together three now influential figures in the world of British music, namely Vaughan Williams, Roger Quilt ...» More

Details

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown;
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, o where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it;
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown:
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave
To weep there.

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true

Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown;
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, o where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ‘tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art no so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember’d not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly…